For the love of money is the root of all evil

Action in Time (and why we cannot understand eternity)–Mises

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CHAPTER 3Action in Time

Human Action1

1. The Temporal Character of PraxeologyThe notion of change implies the notion of temporal sequence. Arigid, eternally immutable universe would be out of time, but itwould be dead. The concepts of change and of time are inseparablylinked together. Action aims at change and is therefore in the temporalorder. Human reason is even incapable of conceiving the ideas of timelessexistence and of timeless action.He who acts distinguishes between the time before the action, the timeabsorbed by the action, and the time after the action has been finished. Hecannot be neutral with regard to the lapse of time.Logic and mathematics deal with an ideal system of thought. The relationsand implications of their system are coexistent and interdependent.We may say as well that they are synchronous or that they are out of time.A perfect mind could grasp them all in one thought. Man’s inability toaccomplish this makes thinking itself an action, proceeding step by step from the less satisfactory state of insufficient cognition to the more satisfactorystate of better insight. But the temporal order in which knowledgeis acquired must not be confused with the logical simultaneity of allparts of this aprioristic deductive system. Within this system the notionsof anteriority and consequence are metaphorical only. They do not referto the system, but to our action in grasping it. The system itself impliesneither the category of time nor that of causality. There is functional correspondence between elements, but there is neither cause nor effect.What distinguishes the praxeological system from the logical systemepistemologically is precisely that it implies the categories both of timeand of causality. The praxeological system too is aprioristic and deductive.As a system it is out of time. But change is one of its elements. The notionsof sooner and later and of cause and effect are among its constituents.Anteriority and consequence are essential concepts of praxeological reasoning.So is the irreversibility of events. In the frame of the praxeologicalsystem any reference to functional correspondence is no less metaphoricaland misleading than is the reference to anteriority and consequence in theframe of the logical system.22. Past, Present, and FutureIt is acting that provides man with the notion of time and makes him awareof the flux of time. The idea of time is a praxeological category.Action is always directed toward the future; it is essentially and necessarilyalways a planning and acting for a better future. Its aim is always torender future conditions more satisfactory than they would be without theinterference of action. The uneasiness that impels a man to act is causedby a dissatisfaction with expected future conditions as they would probablydevelop if nothing were done to alter them. In any case action caninfluence only the future, never the present that with every infinitesimalfraction of a second sinks down into the past. Man becomes conscious oftime when he plans to convert a less satisfactory present state into a moresatisfactory future state.

For contemplative meditation time is merely duration, “la durée pure,dont l’écoulement est continu, et où l’on passe, par gradations insensibles,d’un état à l’autre: Continuité réellement vécue.”3 The “now” of the present is continually shifted to the past and is retained in the memory only.Reflecting about the past, say the philosophers, man becomes aware oftime.4 However, it is not recollection that conveys to man the categories ofchange and of time, but the will to improve the conditions of his life.

Time as we measure it by various mechanical devices is always past,and time as the philosophers use this concept is always either past orfuture. The present is, from these aspects, nothing but an ideal boundaryline separating the past from the future. But from the praxeological aspectthere is between the past and the future a real extended present. Action isas such in the real present because it utilizes the instant and thus embodiesits reality.5

Later retrospective reflection discerns in the instant passedaway first of all the action and the conditions which it offered to action.Th at which can no longer be done or consumed because the opportunityfor it has passed away, contrasts the past with the present. That which cannotyet be done or consumed, because the conditions for undertaking it orthe time for its ripening have not yet come, contrasts the future with thepast. The present offers to acting opportunities and tasks for which it washitherto too early and for which it will be hereafter too late.The present qua duration is the continuation of the conditions andopportunities given for acting. Every kind of action requires special conditionsto which it must be adjusted with regard to the aims sought. Theconcept of the present is therefore different for various fields of action. Ithas no reference whatever to the various methods of measuring the passingof time by spatial movements. The present encloses as much of thetime passed away as still is actual, i.e., of importance for acting. The presentcontrasts itself, according to the various actions one has in view, withthe Middle Ages, with the nineteenth century, with the past year, month,or day, but no less with the hour, minute, or second just passed away. Ifa man says: Nowadays Zeus is no longer worshiped, he has a present in mind other than that the motorcar driver who thinks: Now it is still too early to turn.As the future is uncertain it always remains undecided and vaguehow much of it we can consider as now and present. If a man had said in1913: At present — now — in Europe freedom of thought is undisputed,he would have not foreseen that this present would very soon be a past.

2In a treatise on economics there is no need to enter into a discussion of the endeavors to
construct mechanics as an axiomatic system in which the concept of function is substituted for that of cause and effect. It will be shown later that axiomatic mechanics cannot serve as a model for the treatment of the economic system.